If America lurches towards dictatorship, it will be more with a whimper than a bang. We won’t need to fear secret police so much as the oppressiveness of mass conformity, social pressure, the siphoning of wealth, and the spread of “official” viewpoints. I realize Americans’ fears of one’s political opponents assuming dictatorial powers are a bit overwrought and overdone. Neither W, Bush Senior, Clinton, nor Reagan was in any real sense a potential dictator, even though all three were reviled and feared by many opponents. Nonetheless, with the perspective of time, we see that their imagery, styles, goals, and personalities were American through and through.
The times and the place create the leader, and our post-religious, meaning-starved society more than ever wants atonement, purpose, and passion. The Obama message to white and black alike has resonated. To the former he promises forgiveness, to the latter, dignity and power. But his style, his words, and the imagery of his campaign are all new, whether in the form of enormous adoring crowds or the creepy posters. Coupled with an existing economic crisis and the Bush administration expansion of executive power, Obama certainly could move us in a very bad direction from which it would be very difficult to return to ordinary, constitutionally limited government. Some of the brakes we take for granted will be absent. Obama can cry racism, for instance, in the casual, insinuating way he did in his primary campaign against Hillary Clinton. Further, his supporters and his support is both intense and untethered to specific actions. It is hard to imagine that Obama will be forced to deflect the kind of criticism Bush has been subjected to from the right. By 2004, Bush was widely treated by conservatives as a mere magistrate and widely defended simply as the lesser of two evils.
The best analog would probably be someone like the Four Term leader, FDR, who retained a cult-like level of respect long after his death among working class survivors of the Great Depression. In reading a collection of contemporary essays, I was struck by the prescience and continuing relevance of the following passage by Herbert Agar:
Our real danger is from people like the late Huey Long, or the amiable Doctor Townsend. If fascism comes to America, it will not come as the result of a comic-opera putsch in which Wall Street buys an ex-general of Marines to lead a march on Washington. It will come as it came to Europe, as a revolt of the lower middle class, of the people who want to be self-respecting proprietors, but who find themselves-dispossessed–proletarian in fact, but not in feeling. These people are easy game for the demagogue, for the man who will promise them the moon and promise it quickly, who will tell the desperate middle class the the problem of making them all kings, or all financially independent, is perfectly simple.
If the middle class is sufficiently desperate, it will vote the demagogue into power. And when the demagogue comes to power, he will find that his ‘age of plenty’ is not so easy to provide. At that point fascism is born. At that point the demagogue, threatened with a breakdown of the whole economic system, turns to the Lords and Masters whom he has been abusing, and makes a deal. The demagogue stays in office and keeps the people quiet. The Lords and Masters stay in power and run the economic systems just the way they ahve always wanted to run it. The corporate State is monopoly-capitalism made safe, monopoliy capitalism with the whole power of society behind it.
The economic bailout rammed through Congress will give Obama and his future treasury secretary incredible leverage over every sector of the economy. Apparently “helping” our basket case auto industry is now on the agenda, but everything will have a catch: obeissance to whatever faddish idea Obama has about giving his constituents a fair deal, anti-free-market environmentalist extremism, and who knows what else. The worst thing about this will be that Bush’s corporate welfare was always rightly labeled as such by genuine free market critics. Obama will have his mass movement in his corner, denouncing critics as retrograde special interests and uncompassionate failures. He’ll tie the passions of young people with the most small-minded and short-sighted indulgences in mercantalism. Judging by the way he handled things in Chicago and on the campaign trail, don’t expect kid cloves from The One, especially when he’s pursuing bad policies that help the connected few at the expense of the many.
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Demagoguery is always a theoretical danger. Obama has given us no reason to suspect dictatorial desires at all. I recall many were afraid of the same thing from Bush. Our system is so fractured that achieving dictatorship is practically impossible. We had a little brush with it after 911 and the hysteria leading up to the occupation of Iraq. Dictatorship did not come about. Was it because of Bushes egregious incompetence or the simple inability of anyone to force his will through our system? I say lets give the new President the opportunity to do his job. I may work just fine.
I agree it remains to be seen, but no one ever suggested George Bush was a “light worker.” If he goes haywire, he’ll surely say his followers were begging him, and that his critics are being “cynical.”
“I say lets give the new President the opportunity to do his job. I[t] may work just fine.”
There’s a line from this Mike Myers bit . . . something about monkeys? Man, I wish I could remember it.
I thought it very ominous that Obama said he was going to throw his weight around to push for the creation of a college football playoff system. That is not the sign of someone who thinks of his powers as limited.
Partisans on both sides put way too much weight on the individual leader at the top. Lefties are afraid Bush will institute martial law, Righties are afraid Obama will institute martial law.
Stop. It’s tiresome.
The REAL danger to freedom does not arise from top-down governmental action, but from lawsuits and threats of lawsuits. In other words, it comes from Leninist lawyers and Leninist judges.
It’s possible that the anti-discrimination lawyers will “feel their Wheaties” under Obama, but it’s also possible that they will feel less need for ferocity when their man is on top. Time will tell.
I agree Polistra. David Manley, I tihnk Obama was replying tongue-in-cheek.
http://www.usatoday.com/sports/columnist/mccarthy/2008-11-16-obama-playoff_N.htm
He sure sounds serious to me. The BCS seems to be taking him seriously as well.
The idea that the individual leaders don’t have that much weight is pretty silly. Ever heard of FDR or Jackson? What about the less effective Presidents like Carter who still manage to create entire new bureaucracies to staff legions of activist Leninist lawyers?
Sure lawsuits are important, but their importance doesn’t diminish the importance of our political leaders, particularly since they are the ones that create and enforce the laws those lawyers abuse.
Would someone awaken me when the dictators and fascists arrive.
Tell them I said hello and to kiss my unimpressed ass.
The funny thing is, there’s no end to these putative end-times. Every new regime is either the next Stalin or the next Hitler. Or both.
The reality is that very little changes. Maybe some road gets paved. For example, what rights as kids have you lost as adults? Give me one.
If anything, society has expanded our liberty and our equality. Not the reverse. Blame it on the 14th amendment if it makes you feel better. Now every two-bit cult, sect and minority with a bitch gets exposure and air-time galore, front and centre, as if their melodramatic cause suddenly rivals Independence.
Wow, the power of the omni-dictator is really scary.
Please. I’m going back to sleep. In fact, don’t wake me, not with the same old noise.
If you’re only going to be impressed by jackbooted thugs marching down the street and throwing dissenters in camps, then you probably have a few more decades to remain unimpressed.
Of course I don’t think Chris is claiming that Obama is going to found the fourth reich. He’s talking about the likelihood that he will use his near cult status to accelerate the trend towards government control in the United States.
We may now have more freedom to stick our dicks where we like and say offensive things (so long as it doesn’t offend a minority of some sort), but there are other freedoms that have noticeably declined or are in danger of disappearing. For instance, the ability of business owners to fire and hire who they like, the owners of housing to decide who their tenants are, the power of medical providers to decide which patients they will accept and what procedures they will perform, the ability to start a business without worrying about a massive government-induced financial crisis, the right to own certain types of guns, the right to keep the same percentage of your income as others in society,etc, etc.
I don’t have a problem with some of these things, but the trend is clear – more government control. If Obama turns out to be an FDR-like figure, we can be fairly sure that we will have less freedom and the government will have significantly more power by the time he’s done. If you have a sense of perspective that stretches past election cycles, this is a significant thing.
The poster of Obama reminds me of a “pop” portrait of Chairman Mao at the Art Institue of Chicago. In the poster, Obama is being presented as a Pop Idol. Warhol did similar pop portraits of of the “pop tart” Marilyn Monroe. Obama is being packaged and sold to us by his image-makers similar to the advertising campaign for a can of Campbell’s soup or a bottle of coke, other ubiquitous symbols employed by Warhol in his ironic art, if I can charitably call it such.
“He’s talking about the likelihood that he will use his near cult status to accelerate the trend towards government control in the United States.”
That government “control,” as you call it, began about 140 years ago when John Bingham drafted the 14th amendment and persuaded the dopes in congress and in the courts that the states were second fiddle to DC.
Throw in a contemporaneous liberal reading of the commerce clause and, well, all downhill from there, pal.
It don’t matter one hoot if you elect the man in the moon, if’n government “control” is what you’re looking to change.
I would agree with you that we long ago set a course towards bigger and more powerful central government. Of course, it doesn’t take a doctorate in history to notice that the trend speeds up and slows down depending on who is in power. And the relative speed of the transition does matter, particularly to those of us living through the process.
So as much as I would like to just chalk up the meaning of life and the course of history to the 14th amendment, congratulate myself for my sophistication, and then call it a day, things like who the President is, what he believes, and how much power the public wants to give him all still matter.
Right.
Explain to me again the substantive distinction in governmental control between, say, Bush, Clinton, BushSR and Reagan.
I forget which one allowed me to share in this contingent experience you’re describing.
So I guess I am not allowed to talk about Carter, Johnson, or FDR?
But since you ask that specific question, here’s growth in government under Bush II versus Reagan.
http://www.cato.org/pubs/tbb/tbb-0308-16.pdf
Here’s something on Reagan versus Clinton on government regulation.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,122399,00.html
These are the first things I got when I searched Bush versus Reagan and Clinton versus Reagan. I guess I could write a big long post, but then I would just end up thinking “shit, I just wasted my time trying to convince somebody that the President of the United States is important.”
Seriously dude.
Can we stop for a moment to consider how ridiculous it is to reduce a huge trend such as “government control” to John Bingham and the 14th amendment? I mean, it took almost a century after the amendment was passed for it to gain any substantial teeth under the Warren Court. Misguided as the amendment was and as destructive as interpretations of it have been in the last two generations, am I really supposed to believe that this one constitutional provision is the all-powerful source of something as complex and historically complicated as “government control,” so much so that contingent events like presidential elections don’t matter?
I firmly believe that we tend to overrate the world-changing consequences of our elections every four years. Ridiculously so. But just because the tendency is wrong, and just because it occurs every fours years, doesn’t mean that sometimes it won’t be right. Presumably someone making Chris and David’s point in 1932 would have been correct according to resh? And presumably someone making that point in 1860, given the relationship between that election and the ultimate passage of the 14th amendment several years later?
Chris and David have made an actual argument about what Obama’s presidency might mean in this regard. Smugly pointing out that Carter’s election or Bush 41′s or Benjamin Harrison’s were meaningless is not a response to this argument.
I’m not all that concerned about the cult of personality that surrounds Obama (blessed be His name).
What’s much more likely is that he jams a bunch of leftist Change through the filibuster-proof Senate, and puts the economy into an even deeper funk. Four years from now, when GWB looks like a shining example of good government stewardship, Obama is replaced either by a Chavez type Democratic challenger, or a legitimate third-party dark horse party.
Then the fun begins.
Relax, Wade.
I’m happy to stipulate that presidents and elections matter. Marginally.
But the central issue is whence governmental control. From where will the great oppressions truly arise?
I was juxtaposing a president’s tenure-and whatever impact he might have in (four or) even eight years-against some specific, seismic legislation or law that rings in perpetuity.
I’ll see your putative fascist and raise you some smothering legislation. Let’s see who ultimately achieves governmental control.
Indeed, I’m more than happy to make the case that an Obama or a Bush-or even Mr. Activist FDR-are/will be dwarfed in social legacy and in influence by the expansive readings and effects of the 14th amendment and the commerce clause in article 1 (which, btw, FDR exploited to aid his welfare cause).
Every Executive has mechanical issues. He will never achieve a persuasive fascist or dictatorial state simply because he must battle the forces of tradition and convention, not to mention the divisions of power, and do so within a very short window of opportunity. (I’m conceding here that his popularity, like the type Roach describes, would allow him some subtle constitutional and legal machinations.)
And his control, even if compelling, would last how long?
Conversely, legislation has time on its side. No need to hurry. Ideology, popularity, fashion-they are meaningless to legislation. If that legislation is bad or inapplicable in one generation, it has dozens more waiting to find a genuflecting audience. Once successful, it breeds familiarity and takes root.
Government control is not a sprint, it’s a marathon. So pick your poison. Obama the cult hero or legislation as time’s hero.
Take a closer look at the two examples I gave you. Confront two distinct pieces of legislation, the commerce clause and (the first parts of )14th amendment that have achieved a kind of “government control” imprimatur. They represent control in perpetuity.
Roach is a lawyer and can tell you better than I could the pervasive impact of that law and how it managed to reduce local and state governments to puppets.
What president did that, if for more than a few years? Lincoln? FDR? Reagan?
All dead.
Meanwhile, the 14th and the commerce clause are knocking on your door. Tell the oppressors I said hello.
So let me get this straight, leaders are only marginally important, because it’s the laws that expand the power of government.
Hmmm.
One, it is still the leaders who choose to expand the power of government by exploiting the law. The law is only a tool, which can be repealed or overruled by new laws created and enforced by these leaders.
Two, if a law does have an ability to extend its control into perpetuity, why aren’t you concerned with the people who will make new ones?
Three, if laws are so much more important than people, why haven’t we seen only constitutional democracies in Latin America?
Fourth, why do you think time was frozen with the passage of the 14th amendment? Isn’t it possible that a president might have his party introduce legislation that proves even more influential? Or appoint a supreme court justice who finds even more creative ways to interpret the commerce clause? Why does John Bingham get to be only consequential figure in American history? Did you do your thesis on him or something?
And yes you’re right, FDR is dead. How about social security?
Hi Dave,
At the risk of reaching diminishing returns, let me just end with a couple of points.
The fascist or the dictator can arrive at any time and induce this excess governmental control that so consumes you. If we can elect a messiah, we can certainly elect a king.
So there ya’ go. Go get your guns.
Except in 230 or so years, that hasn’t happened, has it? Not even close. Amidst all the manifold circumstances we’ve witnessed, when times were ripe for unbridled power, the executive reach has remained stable.
Can you name one president who’s remotely parroted the style of either the fascist or the dictatator?
You give me FDR and social security. Have you no intellectual honesty? Everybody who thinks that social security is an instantiation of fascism or Big Brother, please raise your hand. What next, that he underscored extended unemployment benefits?
I might have entertained, say, a Lincoln when he unilaterally repealed habeas corpus, but even that was done in an extraordinary situation-when he felt it preserved the union. I might have even accepted a Bush with his bogus war on terror obsessions-the usual suspects-but take a look where he ended up. More in disfavor than bin Laden. Some fascist.
The reason for a president’s inabilty to become what you fear, to repeat, is because our politcal framework makes doing so nearly impossible. His window of opportunity is a hiccup. Nor to mention the obvious, but our institutional safeguards preclude an individual from achieving major usurpations.
At worst, take Nixon for example, a president might find the ears or elbow room to elevate his executive powers for some short-term gain, for some political expediency. But even Nixon et al needed to break the law to get there. The tides of tradition and a deep cultural democratic DNA weigh heavily against sea-changes by one person.
That’s why I conterpose the notion of things like the commerce clause and other states-rights encroachments as a greater device for (especially centralized) governmental control. There’s the worry. Those things transcend time and permeate, often like a virus, the fabric of our constitutional liberties.
You just don’t seem to understand the point we are making. It’s not that Obama is going to become a dictator, it’s that as President he can move us closer to the day when a future President could become a dictator.
To postulate that because of America’s history and political traditions it is immune from ever becoming a totalitarian state is ridiculous. You might as well have said that France was immune from ever becoming a Republic, or the Roman Republic from becoming an Empire. In the course of history things change, and history is full of dictators whose window of opportunity was only a “hiccup”.
And to belittle the importance of social security is silly, especially since it sucks up 15% of your pay when you factor in the employee contributions, and will likely suck up far, far more in the future when its unfunded obligations are considered. That’s a very big deal.
Things change, sometimes gradually, sometimes not so gradually. An Obama treated as the messiah in a time of economic uncertainty is likely to push things along at a fairly rapid clip, changing the cultural DNA you speak of and accelerating the ever-widening control of government over our lives.
how in the world can you discount the fact that it is because of the past 8 years that we have gotten to this point of being so, so, so, so close to fascism already? on paper aren’t we already a dictatorship? i share concern and pessimism about an obama presidency for different reasons. i actually agree with a lot of what you are worried about, but if anything i think that obama is too much of the same rather than some change in another direction. kucinich or even ron paul, would have been preferable over mccain or obama.
Jen, I don’t mean to discount the steady climb in government power under Bush and also his predecessors, which I mention above. What is distinct is Obama’s treatment by his own supporters and the media. Bush had many critics in the media, and many critics from the right for his “big government” approach ranging from NCLB to the $600B+ prescription drug giveaway.
I think we’re far from a dictatorship now and will also be under Obama, but his tone and its interaction with his supporters is what is new on the scene, or at least has not been seen since FDR.
I think the best case scenario is that he’s a moderate pragmatist concerned more with reelection than being a world-historical change agent. It remains to be seen. But that poster speaks for itself.
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